Democrat Illinois is broke and will cease all road work on July 1

The state of Illinois is broke, so broke that the state government sent a notice to contractors that beginning July 1, they are to halt all road work, except what is needed for safety.

Investment adviser Mike “Mish” Shedlock of Mish Talk reports that after years of over-spending and a very business unfriendly environment, the state of Illinois is in dire financial straits. The state government has not passed a budget for close to three years, its unpaid bills are a whopping $14.3 billion, and Moody’s has downgraded its bond rating, with five Illinois universities rated junk.

Yesterday, June 14, 2017, the state told contractors to halt all non-safety related roadwork.

Below is a screenshot of the letter sent to contractors by Pam R. Simon, Director of Illinois’ Office of Business and Workforce Diversity, stating that:

“At this time appropriate funding is not available after June 30, 2017 . . . .

On July 1, 2017, all work shall cease except for maintenance of existing traffic controls, maintenance of erosion and sediment controls and such efforts that will secure conditions of danger to highway system users as directed by the engineer.”

The parlous state of Illinois’ finances can be seen in its universities and the state’s economic activity:

Illinois’ economic growth is worse than during the Great Depression: total state economic activity has increased by only 4% since 2007, which is lower than the U.S.’ 10% GDP growth during the worst decade of the Great Depression according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

Despite an increase in population, Illinois has 146,000 fewer people working than during the Great Depression.

Although the number of administrators in Illinois’ universities grew by nearly a third (31.1%) between 2004 and 2010, the number of faculty and students only increased 1.8% and 2.3%, respectively. Student tuition and fees increased 100% since 2006, and retirement costs now consume more than 50% of all state spending on higher education.

Illinois’ answer to its financial insolvency is to raise taxes. But it took $31.6 billion of new tax revenue to reduce the backlog of bills by only $1.3 billion. At the same time, the state’s pension debt got worse, increasing by more than $25B from 2010 through 2015.

somehow, during all these messes, they always manage to line their pockets…
everything democrats touch turns to crap…
what happens when they run out of other people’s money?
the people need to get involved in this mess to fix things…no one holds these legislators and administrators for the wreckage and carnage they create from their greedy and selfish acts accountable anymore.
these people do what they want and get away with it.
france had it right with the guillotine. legislators/administrators should do what is right by the people or be jailed for failure to do so…

Couldn’t happen to a nicer state! You would think that, with all the people who have been murdered just in Chicago, the population would begin to dwindle. Apparently, law enforcement is averse to stopping the crime. This is a perfect example of what happens when Liberals are in control; they are truly the kiss of death.

Another excellent example, of course, is California. They are broke too. Illinois and California must be very proud of themselves.

Supposedly, the black population IS decreasing, though you’d never know it with all of the violent crime that never ends. With the Chicago PD coming “under fire” by the Ballerina-in-Chief, the aldercreatures, and the black population in general, the police are making fewer arrests, because everything they do procedurally is being called into question. Rahm Emanuel still wants to implement reforms as recommended by the Lynch DoJ, even though AG Sessions has no plans to monitor & implement them.

Well, they deserve it. And, the stupid moronic demorat gov. of Pennsylvania has been raising taxes and raising them ever since he slithered into office, and the state has a huge deficit, so his big solution is to…..RAISE TAXES again! And, he was comparing PA’s ‘low’ car registration to Illinois and California and New York. And they wonder why PA is losing population. Every tax is going up and you get fewer services too.
Illinois Is ILL. Maybe Obama will save them, HA HA HA HA HA!!

And that is what you get with democratic leadership that lets the unions run amuck. They have teachers retiring with over $300,000 pay checks.
They have regular elections and evidently the people enjoy pain.

The really pathetic thing about all of the “construction season” work is, the fact that it’s politics-based, not on need.

I drive through plenty of places in the Chicago area daily, where roads are getting chewed up and a fresh layer of asphalt are paved over – and they didn’t need it in the first place; meanwhile, there are several deep pot-holed roads that have been filled with asphalt on an as-needed basis, where the re-bar is quite visible, and has needed to be really torn-up & repaired for almost a decade – and there hasn’t been one word about when it’ll get done.

That, and there are also other utility agencies that will dig up a small portion of a freshly repaved road, do their work, and then do a half-assed job of paving over their work.